The Delusionist

by Rachel Mathias

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you call Maddie. There is probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all. And it probably wasn’t even him. Don’t catastrophise Rach, it isn’t worth panicking before there’s good reason to. If you don’t call her, you will sit and assume it’s what you think. If you do call her, there’s a chance of a decent explanation.”

  I didn’t want to even take the risk of having my worst imaginings confirmed. Instead of calling I sent her a message on WhatsApp asking for a chat.

  Sorry Rach, I’m working all day but will give you a call tonight – all okay with you?

  I didn’t reply.

  Because a few hours later I got a call from Sam Dawson.

  Chapter 27

  Any other name

  "I’m sorry to bother you. Is that Rachel?"

  "It is. Who’s this?"

  "I’m Samantha Brize-Dawson."

  The split second that followed before I replied spun out like an eternity before me, as images from the last weeks slapped down on top of each other like centuries of wallpaper. Guildford, horse jumps, sand dunes, ornaments on a windowsill, images of motorbikes, hands patting empty pockets.

  "Sam? Sorry, you mean… as in Harry?”

  “Harry?" She was confused. Then I remembered.

  “I mean as in Jonathan. Jonathan Dawson, sorry – you’re Sam Dawson as in Jonathan…” I was tripping over my words, my eyes seemed to blur with confusion. She sounded young, kind, shy, out of her depth already, and now so was I.

  “Yes, as in Jonathan, I suppose, yes.” She seemed hesitant. There was a brief pause as I tried to compose myself.

  “So, how…?” I hesitated, not sure if this was really happening.

  “Julie gave me your number.”

  “Julie?” All I could do was repeat names, it seemed. She must think I was some kind of space cadet.

  “Jo’s neighbour Julie. She said you had been back in touch and that maybe it would be good if I gave you a call.”

  “Ah, okay, I’m glad you did. I have so many questions, so much has happened I don’t know where to begin.”

  “I think I may be able to help straighten a few things out. Can we meet?”

  I looked at my watch. “Today?”

  “Today, if you can.”

  “I can. Where?”

  “I know this sounds odd, but there’s a car park just off the Chertsey Road, near the M25. I’ll send you the postcode. How soon do you think you can be there?”

  “In an hour, tops.”

  The phone buzzed again straightaway with the postcode and I copied it into Google Maps. It would mean leaving now, and that meant I’d miss collecting Josh at the station at the usual time. I texted him to say I’d had to go out in an emergency and that I’d ask Maya or someone if they could drop him home. He sent me a thumbs up. I climbed into the car and started the engine.

  The traffic was frustratingly slow on Burlington Road, then on the A3 it slowed to a standstill. I pulled into a petrol station to go online. Maya was asking how I was, what I wanted to do about the Maddie situation. Her second message must have come after I didn’t answer for a few minutes, because by then she had looked me up on the app and seen me heading for the depths of Surrey.

  Where the hell are you?

  There wasn’t time to text. Then, pulling out of the garage, I remembered I hadn’t actually asked her to collect Josh. used the Dorset WhatsApp group to post a general request.

  Anyone free to collect Josh from station at 4.30 and drop him home? I’m just pursuing a lead.

  Then, realising that wasn’t enough.

  I think I’ve found his wife.

  The Chertsey Road is like any other road in Surrey. Nondescript, suburban semis give way to recreation grounds, then areas of woodland. It was between the woods and a children’s playground that I found the car park, a good twenty minutes before I should have been there. Sam might come early as well. She seemed in a hurry to see me and we hadn’t fixed an exact time. I reversed into a space at the far end of the car park, then changed my mind and turned the car round, suddenly thinking I’d like to see her before she saw me, somehow get the upper hand by spotting her in the mirror first.

  My heart was pumping hard. I only noticed when I switched off the engine. The noise was almost the same level. I picked up my phone but my hands were sweating too much to operate the touch screen. Taking a few deep breaths, I told myself everything was okay, that this last mission was all I needed to put the finishing pieces of the jigsaw in place. I opened WhatsApp first. Maya had replied that she couldn’t do the pick-up but that she could ask Simon as he was home early from work, and good luck with the mysterious mission. Maddie had opened the message but not replied.

  I was just opening Snapchat as a further distraction from my nerves, when a car pulled in next to me. I hadn’t seen it coming, despite the mirror plan, and now I was looking through my passenger window straight at the face that belonged to a voice I had heard for the first time only an hour earlier. It belonged to a diminutive slip of a girl in her mid-twenties. So this was her. This was Sam Brize. Not the man Harry Dawson set up his business with, and probably not his wife either. For a second, I was too shocked to move. Slowly and almost gracefully, she opened her door, stepped out of the car and motioned as if to ask if she could get into mine. I nodded, moving my mess off the seat and dusting off the crumbs that seemed to permanently nestle in the stitching lines. The door opened in slow motion, and the noise of the traffic hit me for a brief second until she shut it behind her. We looked at each other. For some reason I wanted to cry.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  “Shall we drive?” she replied. “I’d feel safer if we were moving.”

  “If you want,” I said. “What do you mean, safer?”

  She looked over her shoulder, the way I had done so often since meeting the man who had overturned my world, and back at me.

  “I suppose we’re okay here for a bit, but it’s not good that we’re meeting. He won’t like it.”

  “I see, okay, let’s do that.” I put the key in the ignition and switched on the engine. “Do you have anywhere in mind?”

  “I can direct you to somewhere a bit more off the beaten track.”

  “Okay, can I just check something first? I need to see if my son got home okay.”

  “Sure.”

  I opened up WhatsApp again, and there was still no answer from Maddie, and no message anywhere from Simon. I rang Josh, but it went to voicemail. “Shit, where is he?”

  “Do you have find my friends? Share my location?” suggested Sam. “Where’s he supposed to be?”

  “A friend is supposed to be collecting him from the station. I have that thing on Snapchat, unless he’s gone into, what do you call it?”

  “Ghost mode?”

  “That’s it. How are you so savvy about it then?”

  “It’s a bit old hat to be honest, but it was fun a few years ago. Everyone used it.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “I’m only twenty-five remember. It’s what we live on, Snapchat, Instagram.”

  “Twenty-five?”

  I opened SnapMaps to see a screen crowded with avatars. I saw Sadie still at school, probably rehearsing the musical again, and Maya at the office, Jess at the café, and Maddie… I squinted at the screen, zoomed in some more, Maddie on the M25, and another avatar just next to her, almost on top of hers. It was Josh.

  “Oh my God. I don’t believe it.”

  “What? Is everything okay?”

  “I don’t know. Something weird is happening. Take a look at this.”

  Sam leaned over the phone, pulling her long hair over to the other side as she did so. She smelt of bubble bath.

  “Who are these two?”

  “That’s my friend Maddie, and that’s Josh, my son.”

  “So that’s okay then, she’s picked him up.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t supposed to be h
er, and why is she coming down the A3 with him?”

  “They’re coming here? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Not sure why they would, unless they’re following me, because she’s worried about me?”

  Sam’s face changed. “Do they know something? Do you trust her?”

  “Of course.” I said it without thinking. Sam must have seen my face change, but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t go there now. “It just doesn’t make any sense. Do you think this app always tells the truth? I mean, are they definitely there, exactly there where it says?”

  “Yeah, well at least their phones are there, but you can’t have a car without a person, and how old did you say Josh was?”

  “Fifteen, just.”

  “So it can’t be him driving.”

  I collected my thoughts. If you can’t solve a problem, think about something else, then when you come back to it, things sometimes fall into place. I looked at Sam, who looked back at me, wide-eyed, questioning.

  “You said you were twenty-five.” I said, half to myself.

  “Yes, why? Dad was only eighteen when he had me.”

  I turned towards her. “Say that again?”

  “Dad, well it feels weird calling him that, after everything that happened. But I guess that’s what he is, technically, even though we hardly speak anymore. He sends money, wants me to succeed, set up a business, even set one up for me, with me on the paperwork, said I could do what I liked and he’d support me. I wanted to run a mobile beauty business.”

  That made sense. I stared ahead at the row of conifers in front of the car, sentries standing to attention, blocking my way, holding me hostage. They were the end of the road, the blind alley.

  “I feel such an idiot. I didn’t realise…”

  “You thought I was his wife, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “I guessed that. Didn’t want to tell you everything on the phone. I wanted to see who you were, because Julie said – well she said he wasn’t being straight with you, and you sounded like you needed to know.”

  I switched the engine off again. “No, he wasn’t straight with me. I mean, he said he had three children, but it was a lot of other lies, about what he did for a living, about cars, motorbikes, watches, millions of pounds….”

  “How many children?”

  “Three.”

  She nodded, turned away, then back to me.

  “He did have three.”

  “Did have?”

  “My brother died.”

  “God, Sam, I am so, so sorry.”

  “He was fifteen, I was seventeen, when it happened.”

  “What happened?”

  They divorced when I was three. Mum hated Dad seeing us because of the drugs. He was high on coke the whole time. Cheated on her when she was pregnant with some tart called Nicky.”

  The sickness rose in my stomach again. Sam went on, talking more quickly, in bursts, turning every so often to look behind us.

  “She only let him visit once a month, and only in her house, the one at Farnham Road where Gran lives now. She’d leave him in the sitting room for two hours with us. Never let him take us anywhere.”

  “Must have been awful, for all of you,” I said, in what turned out to be a whisper.

  “Pretty awful. I mean, at the time, I thought Mum was so mean to Dad, I thought he was the handsome prince and she was an evil witch, but that’s probably how he put it.”

  “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  “No abuse, nothing like that. Not that I remember, and I’m sure Mum wouldn’t have let it happen. She was in the next room. The door was open. It was just, well, stressful.”

  “I can imagine.” I glanced at the phone again. Maddie’s car was stuck in traffic somewhere on the M25, probably a good 15 minutes away but it was still bothering me that Josh was with her. “So how did the accident happen?”

  “We were getting older, more bolshy I suppose. I was about to turn eighteen. Dad said he wanted to take me out for my birthday. Mum said no way. But he turned up, drunk, high, and with Nicky in the car. He told us to get in. We were scared. Mum tried to stop him, but he hit her.”

  “Hit her?”

  “I’d never seen him hit anyone before. But he hit her and she collapsed on the doorstep and he yelled at us to get in the car. We were scared, so we got in, and he just revved the engine and pulled out of the drive, turning right just as a car was coming from the right, and another one overtaking in the other lane. At least that’s what they told us afterwards. It was a head on collision. Dad and Nicky were saved by the airbag, and I had put my seatbelt on, so we were all okay, even the driver of the other car survived, but not …..” Sam put her head in her hands

  “Oh my God.” I pictured the driveway to the house, the traffic racing down the Farnham Road. I had stood in that spot.

  “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t need to say anything.” An ambulance raced past on the main road, as if to illustrate the story.

  “Your brother died at the scene?”

  “He flew forwards, crashing into Dad. Died instantly.”

  “Do you….. do you remember… anything?”

  “Nothing. It’s a blank. They said I lost consciousness.“

  Tears were in her eyes now. I was shaking. I put my hands on the wheel to steady them, then back in my lap. I stared at the sentinel trees.

  “I can’t imagine how awful that must have been.”

  “I don’t talk about it much. I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  Sam wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sat upright, pointing at the phone. “Where’s your friend?”

  We looked at the app again. The avatars were moving slowly further towards mine. With trembling hands now, I dialled Josh’s number again, but it went to voicemail. Then I dialled Maddie. It rang once, then went to voicemail. Decline call I thought. Then Why would she do that? It must be fear of getting stopped by the police. Maddie’s car was a tiny primitive thing, fitted barely more than a couple of miniature adults and a handbag. She wouldn’t have a hands-free phone – it just wasn’t her. I put the phone on my lap, turned back to Sam. There was still so much I didn’t know.

  “You said there were three children, I mean, before your brother died.”

  “There was a baby in the car. With Dad and Nicky.”

  “Their baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know about it, at the time, I mean?”

  “No. We got in the car. I think we both thought it was her baby. Wouldn’t have dawned on us it was our half-brother. That was the thing, you see…” she broke off,

  “What do you mean?”

  “My brother died because the baby seat was in the car. He couldn’t find the seatbelt for the middle seat at the back. There probably wasn’t one. Dad didn’t wait. Mum was coming out of the house, screaming at him to stop, and he didn’t. He just slammed his foot down and pulled out of the drive, turning right into the traffic.”

  “Jesus.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments.

  “Where is he now – the baby?”

  “With Nicky, I mean, maybe with Dad and Nicky, I guess, now he’s out of prison.”

  I let it all sink in, as far as it could. Sometimes people tell you so much that you can’t absorb it, like watering a parched plant.

  In my mind, I saw Isabel Taylor’s face, looking at his Tinder photo and straight back at me, turning the phone back towards me on the table.

  “Prison. How long?”

  “Eight years.”

  He had only been out a few months when we met.

  “So, what about Julie?”

  “Oh Julie knows everything, but she feels conflicted or something.”

  “In what way?”

  “She likes Gran, doesn’t want the world to know about Dad, to protect Gran from all the gossip, so she keeps things on the dow
n low.”

  “She said they barely knew each other. Now I get why. That’s good of her, I suppose.”

  “And I have cried on her shoulder a few times, when it seemed like there wasn’t anyone else, you know.”

  “What about your mother?”

  She seemed not to even breathe for a few seconds, then turned to me, breathed slowly, the longest, slowest breath in and then out again. “She killed herself.”

  What happened in our minds for the next few minutes I don’t know. Mine was a mess. Sam was very still. Cars hummed, oblivious, down the dual carriageway in front of us. A plane roared overhead, soaring skywards to a better place. From its tiny windows, we were invisible dots on a patchwork landscape. Clouds were gathering overhead, racing across the sky as the wind picked up, whipping the branches of the trees in front of us and a flurry of raindrops thrashed the windscreen. Nature was urging us on, like a Grand National spectator pounding their horse to victory from the sofa. But nature had no say anymore. It was down to human intervention.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t know. And when I didn’t know what to do, I’d usually ask Maya, or Jess. I phoned Maya.

  “Rach, I was just about to call you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Maddie. She’s in hospital.”

  “But the app says she’s half way round the M25, following me.”

  “Well it’s not her then. She’s been quite badly beaten up. The ambulance arrived. I only knew because Simon was putting the rubbish out, and that’s weird enough for a start, but he saw them taking her out of the house on a stretcher. He offered to go with them but her boyfriend, that Chris guy, had turned up. She wasn’t answering her phone. He was all over the place. He’s with her in hospital now I think.”

  “So who’s got her car, and her phone?”

  There was silence. I heard my heart beating, the blood pumping in my ears.

  “Oh my God Maya, it’s not just her car and her phone he’s got.”

  “What do you mean? Who do you mean? Oh my God, not Harry?”

  “He’s got Josh.”

  Sam had one hand on the door as she listened, wide-eyed to our conversation.